Dennis Dunleavy

Memory, longing and virtual reality

Memory and longing are among the most powerful determinants of human emotion. Within days following the mass shootings at Virginia Tech people found a voice for public expressions of mourning and concern on the Internet. Life transitions, marking an ever-changing series of beginnings and endings, are intensified and enriched by the connectivity of the social web. Now, when words fail to convey emotion, as they have in the tragedy at Virginia Tech, people turn to the Internet for consolation through images and music.

Dozens of videos paying tribute to the students and faculty killed in shootings began to appear on YouTube, illustrating the relationship between technological and social change in our society today.

What we are witnessing today on the Internet through the Virginia Tech tribute video on YouTube is a paradigm shift in the way we understand forms of cultural expression. Young people, using images, music and text appropriated online, are remixing media to meet their emotional needs.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life, more than 55 percent of teens create content for the Internet. Far more than a fad, the Internet, through social networking sites, is fulfilling a demand for young people to reach out and form community in new ways.

The social web extends virtual communities of young people who are gathering and re-blending text, video, images, and audio to  create new forms of cultural expression. According to the Pew Internet & American Life project, "Younger Americans have grown up in a wold of media forms that allow them to participate in the production as well as consumption of content, by allowing teens to create and share their own digital material."

Self-authoring, through the appropriation of existing web content, will be difficult, if not impossible to enforce. Self-authoring is increasingly an important part of how young Americans come to identify themselves and each other.

At the same, young people appear to lack a clear understanding of the distinction between public and private communication.  In other words, weblog entries once thought to be a form of private expression by individuals, is increasingly becoming open to public scrutiny. 

One of the consequences of virtual realities created in cyberspace is that much of material used to make new content is appropriated from existing content, much of which is protected by copyright law. Disregard for intellectual and creative rights on the web appears to be as much a part of the cultural ethos of young creators as the actual production of re-blending content.

The rituals associated with the social web facilicate understanding, reconciliation, consolation, and at times, even conflict. Virtual forms of cultural expression, at the same time, are emergining as some of the most influential determinants in sustaining civil discourse in society.

Not a pretty picture: When Ad and News Messages Collide

There are times when technology gets the better of us. Yesterday, for example,  the technology driving the dynamic web design at MTV.com created irony when video from the Virgina Tech killing spree became juxtaposed against an advertisement promoting the new "Smokin' Aces"  movie -- a film that promises to be full of bloodshed and mayhem.

Dynamic web content refers to an interactive design that places elements on a page in response to various contexts. However, this type of interactivity can also end up sending conflictive messages, especially since studies show that viewers do not navigate web content the same way in which they would read in a traditionanl print format.

To its credit, given the fact that technology can bump heads with social and cultural values, MTV is aware that issues such as this one can arise from time to time.

According to MTV, its news staff makes an effort to "....move on removing such inappropriate juxtapositions...Unfortunately, the system did not react as quickly as we did.  We continue to do our best balancing the inevitable byproducts of dynamism."

At the same time, there appears to be a critical flaw in the increasingly blurry lines between news and advertising content these days on the web -- one that places a premium on making money through advertising over the common sense and good judgment of providing reader's with news.

Kate Zimmerman writes about another juxtaposition of questionable ad placement on Yahoo -- one which a reader views a story about the shootings next to an advertisement for L.L. Bean.

 

Zimmerman notes:

"The contextual ads shown against this story are almost completely irrelevant, if not inappropriate - further proof that contextual ad networks need human editors (or at the very least, a way for advertisers to safeguard against poor placement)."

When disaster stikes: The role of the Social Web in coping with the Virginia Tech tragedy

The major cable and broadcast news outlets came off looking clueless and foolish as reports of a shooting spree on the campus of Virginia Tech began to emerge from Blacksburg.  Loaded of misinformation and a ton of mindless blather, anchors found themselves stumbling for something to say -- tripping over their tongues in the meanwhile.

College students knew better. They forgot FOX and turned to Facebook to get answers and connect with one another.

Kate Zimmerman, on the Searchviews blog observes:

Students are using Facebook as a way to share information about students hit, the delayed response of campus officials, misinformation reported by FOX news, and the identity of the shooter. As such, social media sites have become a visible first source of information for journalists. You can see journalists from CBC, NPR, NBC, and more reaching out to students in the comments fields of posts and in facebook forums. 

Erica Fink of the Cornell Sun in an interview with communication professor Jeff Hancock reports how the use of social networking sites such as facebook have become important in times of crisis. Hancock attributes Facebook's utility during the crisis, in part, to the failure of other convenitonal communication technologies such as cell phone service, and the university's e-mail and website.   

Fink notes, "Facebook provides an alternate means of communication that may work when other means of communication fail."

We cannot underestimate how critical it becomes in times of crisis and afterward to communicate with each other. When other lines of communication crash, people turn to what works for them to stay up to date -- in this case, it was the social web.

 

Barry Wellman, social network analyst, (quoted in Howard Rheingold's book Smart Mobs) suggests:

Complex social networks have always existed, but recent technological developments in communication have afforded their emergence as a dominant form of social organization....

Computer networks and the societal flourishing of social networks are now in a positive feedback loop. 

The value of feedback loops, through social networking sites, is becoming increasingly important in society.  Despite all the forms of communication  afforded us through technology, there is still a feeling of deep discontinuity, uncertainty, and angst that comes with living in the 21st century. Social networking allow people to make connections that satisfy an array of fundamental human needs.

The feedback loop that occurs through the use of Facebook makes it possible for people to circumvent conventional media as well as provide alternative ways to communicate when other means fail or become overloaded. In the Virginia Tech tragedy people were and are acting autonomously and spontaneously through social networking. For example, following the shooting dozens of member groups sprang up to offer sympathy and express concern. 

What was the basic message expressed throughout the ordeal?

We are praying for you.

This could have just as well happened to us.

Technology thought for the day

“Radically new technological ideas, from antibiotics to nuclear power to telegraphy, have emerged time again despite the systemic inertia from which the technological system seems to be suffering. The dynamic may be similar: a complex system which struggle to change against built-in inertia is more likely to change in sudden bursts than in slow, continuous fashion.”

Joel Mokyr, 1997, The political economy of technological change: resistance and innovation in economic history. 

Blurring the lines: What's real?

Mike Musgrove in the Washington Post has a good take on the continuing debate about all those darn "fake" photos out there these days.

The writer lists some of the high-tech features available today in cameras such as,  "red-eye" reduction and the elimination of facial blemishes and pounds. Of course, there are even more features to come,  all of which will enhance our experiences, fix and frame reality for us,  and make the world a better place for our children.

Musgrove contends, "Digitally enhanced photos are starting to bump up against the real world. A few news photographers have lost their jobs for digitally tinkering with their shots, but there's weirder stuff afoot as well."

Without beating a dead pixel here, it's worthwhile considering the larger societal implications of a culture that will actually have to face up to the fact that photography has never been an objective process. Today, digital technology is forcing us to realize that we've been in denial about the process of making pictures since its inception. 

We like to think that what we are seeing in a picture is real. Sure, a picture is real, but it also a social construction --  a contrivance of will, an act of authority, a whim, muse, or something that tickles our fancy.   This is what's  real about photography. When we freeze, fix, and frame a moment in time and space we are essentially excluding a million other moments that are equally as real. A picture is real only in the sense that it represents a fragment of reality. If we alter a fragment of the real in some way during or after a picture is made how much are we altering reality? 

This is a particularly sticky problem for some of us when we begin to realize how the whole logic surrounding the notion of reality or what is real is flawed.

Pictures serve personal and public needs, and by doing so they exist contently within the realm of subjectivity.

Science and technology makes it possible to re-render reality in and out of the camera -- correct the objectionable -- make the imperfect, perfect.

Ultimately, what this really means is that in an imperfect world, digital technology makes it possible for life to appear picture perfect.

Can we trust photographers?

He was a well respected photojournalist.  His pictures have won prizes.

His pictures were altered, according to a recent investigation by the staff of Toledo Blade.

Sunday's Toledo Blade story on the investigation of former Blade photographer Allan Detrich, one of its top photojournalists, reveals the emergence of a pattern of digitally altered images by the staffer.

Since January, according to the Blade, 79 out of 947 pictures submitted by Detrich had been digitally altered. This means that for every 12 pictures Detrich turned in for publication one of them had something added or removed. The investigation began after the National Press Photographers Association notified The Blade over concerns about a what appeared to be a digitally altered image.

According to The Blade's Vice President and Executive Editor, Ron Royhab, "The changes Mr. Detrich made included erasing people, tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires, electrical outlets, and other background elements from photographs. In other cases, he added elements such as tree branches and shrubbery."

Photo Credit: The Toledo Blade

This incident raises a thorny question for photojournalism as an occupation, which prides itself on covering events honestly.

How many other photojournalists at newspapers around the country are also altering  content?

Is this a trend or a fluke?

The downside of new technologies is that people will use them in any way they think may improve their position in life. Behaviors associated with older technologies -- those that made cheating and manipulating more difficult -- are radically changing not only the way we make pictures but also the way we look at them. 

Royhab's explanation in The Blade reveals the angst that comes with acknowledging how one person's actions can impact an entire community:

Honesty is the fundamental value in journalism.

When a Blade reporter or photographer covers a news event, the newspaper and its readers expect an accurate record of the event. Reporters and editors are not allowed to change quotes or alter events to make them more dramatic. Photographers and photo editors cannot digitally alter the content in the frame of a photograph to make the image more powerful or artistic.

A photographer altering the content of images an be looked at in the same light as when a reporter plagiarizes a content for a story, with the understanding that the former is lying and the latter stealing. Whatever, the reason for doing so, the costs in terms of a newspaper's reputation and credibility are severely damaging.

 

Lost Shopping Carts?

Photo credit:  Harry N. Abrams Publishers via AP

Is it just me or do people have to much time on their hands these days?

Here's a great example.

Julian Monague's book, "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification", which was recently named the by Britain's Bookseller/Diagram Prize for strangest title, represents a way of American life that a lot of people rarely consider. It also illustrates a trend in specialty publishing.

Moreover, the idea that photographing stray shopping carts could ever end up as a book is sociologically really interesting. How many of us ever truly consider the aesthetics of a shopping cart out of its environment?

Publishers are always on the look out for strange and quirky topics to promote and this one is a fair example of this practice.

It was the first day of the spring soccer season in Ashland, Ore. and everything was perfect -- 40 degrees and raining like crazy.

Ethics and Public Faith in Journalism Takes a Hit, Again

At a time when public confidence in journalism continues to slip, questionable professional practices or lapses in personal judgment are having as much an impact on the industry as they have on a given individual.

Last month, when, Toledo Blade photographer Allan Detrich digitally altered an image to make it less distracting, his actions, whether intentional or accidental, provide yet even more fuel to the fire of public distrust. Apparently, Detrich's  creative license may prove to extend beyond this one incident.

We now have reached a point in our society when, at times, the media seems determined to abdicate a portion of its commitment to the truth, for expediency.

As a representative of an industry already under intense public scrutiny, Detrich, who recently resigned from the newspaper, now joins a growing list of photojournalists, such as Charlotte Observer photographer Patrick Schneider, Lebanese freelancer Adnan Hajj, and Los Angeles Times photographer Brian Walski, who have succumbed in recent years to the temptations of digital technology. 

The big question these incidents raise is simple: Why do some photographers feel compelled to manipulate images, while others live with what they get? Getting to the answer, however, is far more complex and may reside actually in a culture, which excels in competition and individualism.

People do not like being lied to. Digital manipulation, the addition or subtraction of contributing or distracting elements in a frame, is a type of fraud and lying.

Jonathan Wallace observes, “The reason that I hate lies is because, like you, I wish to navigate carefully through life, and to do so I must be able to calculate my true position. When you lie to me, you know your position but you have given me false data which obscures mine.”

Journalists have always been moral agents of culture and societal tastes. News content falls within an informational/representational system that changes over time. Journalism has its good times and its bad times throughout history. Within this informational/representational system, however, truth has always remained a core journalistic virtue. Journalists must struggle to obtain and maintain truth in reportage because every situation they encounter is slightly different – always presenting differing degrees of moral complexity. 

The act of altering an image to correct a deficiency may seem innocent enough on the surface, but deeper down the shift from fact to fiction signifies a moral choice that is informed by either ignorance or duplicity.   Regardless of motive or rationale, Detrich’s case should remind us that journalists function to serve the public good through a series of professional and societal expectations and obligations that are imposed upon them.

In this digital age, these expectations and obligations become intensified to the point, where opportunities to make things look better or to get the better of the competition are just too easy.

Ultimately, it seems not to matter how rigorous and vigilant the media is in detecting and ousting those who lie through their photography and reporting. The damage is done -- public faith, once again, is lost. 

Exploring human qualities in the social interactions between photographers and subjects

Social documentary photography is unique and powerful form of cultural expression. Recently, while preparing a lecture for students on organizing a documentary photography project, I discovered J. Ruth Gendler's "The book of qualities."  This is a small book that wouldn't come to mind when thinking about photography for most people, but what it does is provide inspiration, especially when students are beginning to examine some of their preconceptions, perferences, prejudices, and presuppostions about the role of photography in society.

Gendler lists 99, mostly human, qualities and writes a bit of prose about each one.  In selecting a topic or subject of a documentary work we begin by considering three possible obstacles to following through with a project. The three aspects we touch on are access, time, and motivation/organization.

Once we have worked through the access and time constraints of the projects, we then begin to assign some of the qualities, found in the book, to the subject. For example, each photographer associates what they think may represent the qualities they will encounter with their subjects. A student working on a project about a nursing students may examine such qualities or conditions such as anxiety, competition, intensity, confidence, and compassion as a starting point. As the project begins in earnest, these qualities are looked for in the editing process and used to keep the work focused.

The central idea to this exercise is to help students examine some of the cultural and social understandings they hold toward others.

White House Photo Blog from TIME

TIME magazine's White House photo blog provides a behind-the-scenes look at the Bush presidency that usually doesn't appear in the pages of the magazine or elsewhere.  Photographers such as Brooks Kraft and Christopher Morris have distinctive ways of looking at the day to day in the life of a U.S. president.

James Nachtwey Accepts 2007 TED Award

Photojournalist James Nachtwey won this year's Technology, Entertainment, Design or TED award for his contributions to society through documenting more than 20 years of conflicts around the world.

In his acceptance speech, Nachtwey  acknowledges how "The free flow of information is absolutely vital for a free and dynamic society to function properly."

Visual journalism, Nachtwey observes, has, since the 1960s, played an increasingly important role in this flow of information.

As Nachtwey notes, "I saw that the free flow of information presented by journalists, specifically visual journalists, can bring into focus both the benefits and the costs of political policies."

In his presentation, Nachtwey is extremely eloquent and lucid about the role of visual journalism in society today. For students and professionals, this is a powerful speech and well worth the time and  attention.

Photojournalism's digital future is not all about manipulation

Photo Credit: Visual Impact Inc.

Despite the hype about how technologies are making photography less credible through digital manipulation,  it is interesting to note that the practice of retouching images was quite pervasive throughout the 1950s until the 1980s. In fact, some of text books from this period actually demonstrate techniques to remove "distractions" from an image.

Putting this into a more contemporary context, there is no question that digital technologies are far superior in terms of ease of manipulating images, but public awareness as well as appropriate training have made current generations of photojournalists more conscientious as to the implications of digital shenanigans.  Despite  fears that deception is rampant in the media, it seems that  oversight as well as education have contributed to keeping visual communicators more accountable for what they present.

 

Decisive ambiquity: How pictures slice life into nasty little fragments of reality

Photo Credit: AP/Jim Cole

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York reacts to seeing and old friend during a campaign stop at the National Education Association New Hampshire, in Concord, N.H., Friday, March 30, 2007.

As the race for the White House heats up, the role images play in shaping a candidate's public perception becomes increasingly critical. So much of modern-day campaigning seems determined by the candidate's "image" is presented to the public. In the heavily media mediated carnival of American politics today, there is always a chance that one candidate will come off looking like a jackass in the horse race.  For some candidates, one bad picture can destroy all hope of victory.

Ever since Howard Dean's seemingly uninhibited emotional display in the last election, one would think that candidates would be hyper-sensitive about how they appeared in public, especially with the media following every move.

Social interaction theorist Erving Goffman, in his book "The Presentation of Self in Everday Life, describes the interaction between people as a kind of "performance" -- an "activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants." Goffman's analysis of social behavior is an appropriate way of thinking about how politicians act in public.

The question this raises, especially in studying the image of Hillary Clinton's startled expression, is whether or not politicians regard the media as participants in the performance. In other words, do politicians come to a point where they ignore the presence of the media covering them. Clearly, there appears to be little room for spontaneity in terms of how expressive candidates can be in front of the cameras.

Despite the pretense of "truth" that comes with  fixing and framing a moment in time, there is always a feeling of internal conflict in terms of slicing life into fragments, especially when the moment misrepresents an individual's complex personality.  Some critics of the media might view the picture of Ms. Clinton as a biased "cheap shot", while others might defend it as the "truth."

In a recent thread concerning the objectivity of news photographs, Rishi's comments have a great deal of substance.

Rishi observes:

We have come to regard photographs as 'true' or 'truthful' representations of acts based on our faith in media reportage(questionable). At the turn of the 20th century & even much later, a photograph along with a news piece in a newspaper provided a window into the happening of that act, which in turn strengthened our belief in the authenticity of the photograph. But we have come a long way now and photographs may not necessarily depict truth, but rather attempt to provide a grip around social, cultural & political scenarios based on the levels of our visual literacy."